First Cup Coffee: The Original Seed is a coffee roasting company specializing in single original Ethiopian coffee that it sells online. Products are available as whole bean, five different grinds, and in coffee pods. When the company approached Brown & Pratt about custom-printed packaging, they knew from the beginning what they wanted, which is increasingly common with startup companies and younger founders. They are more familiar with the rise of unboxing and tend to have a clearer picture of exactly what they want early on. In this case, First Cup Coffee had a clear vision for a deluxe mailer box despite the higher up-front tooling costs required to make the cutting dies. 

Being coffee people, the client had likely done their own research to see how other companies were doing their packaging, which is why the client knew what they wanted. Their goal was to not appear like a startup but instead look like they were already established with a smart-looking mailer box most rookies wouldn’t have figured out in the startup phase. In other words, the modern startup doesn’t want anything to look like they’re inexperienced because it could turn customers off by creating doubt about the quality of the product. This is how important even packaging is in shaping customer perceptions of the company’s brand and products. Having the product arrive to a customer’s doorstep in a plain brown box simply wouldn’t have the desired branding and product quality impact.

The takeaway here is that consumers can and will form an initial impression about a product’s quality based on the packaging it comes in.

When a client comes along who has a very clear vision of what they want and can articulate it in detail, it’s easy to assume the client knows more than they do about custom-printed packaging. Those assumptions must be checked to ensure you are meeting the client where they’re at. A client may appear to know more than they really do.

As this project developed with the client, it became apparent there were some misconceptions to correct. For example, the client was assuming his boxes would involve printing in three colors, including the brown and black artwork and the white on the outside of the box. The client didn’t realize the cardboard would come with one side already being white (the outside of the mailer box) and the other side brown kraft (the inside of the box). The client had the same misconception about the custom-printed sealing tape as well. In both cases, each job was only a two-color job, in one case printed on the white side of the corrugated mailer box and in the other case printed on white carton sealing tape. The client was pleased to discover the lower costs involved with two-color printing versus three-color printing.

The point here was that every client, regardless of how knowledgeable they appear to be at first, will still need education and guidance along the way. The vendor must stay tuned to pick up on those places where education or guidance is needed rather than assuming a client must know based on their initial clarity about what they want.

Missteps and mistakes are always possible, and when they do occur, it could completely derail the relationship with a client, causing them to switch to a new vendor. Brown & Pratt’s reputation is such that we’re often the vendor a customer is switching to because of a bad experience with another vendor.

This is especially true when clients have tried to work directly with manufacturers that have made online ordering of packaging products “easy” by letting them select their packaging template and upload artwork themselves. The problem with this approach is that most clients have never done this self-design process before, which means the chances are much higher for the final product not to turn out right because the client simply didn’t know how to check things over. They end up with a pile of packaging that’s wrong and must eat the cost of their own mistakes. It’s also been our experience with those kinds of vendors that while the up-front setup costs appear to be the cheapest, the per-unit cost of each box ends up being significantly more than with Brown & Pratt, sometimes as much as four times more.

The advantage of working with a full-service packaging company like Brown & Pratt is avoiding those kinds of costly mistakes because it’s their job to make sure everything’s right. Yes, the occasional mistake still occurs, but Brown & Pratt is going to address it and make it right! Repairing and maintaining the relationship with a client is of the utmost importance, which may or may not be the case with other vendors.